Abstract

Marx developed the theory of historical materialism in the context of "left Hegelian" debates from 1837 to 1845. The dissertation examines Marx's evolving position in these debates from his student days at the University of Berlin to his resignation as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung . Chapter one establishes the hermeneutical problem involved in assessing Marx's earliest philosophical writings in relation to the theory of historical materialism. The dissertation presumes the "organic" continuity of Marx's development: Marx's earliest work makes integral contributions to the eventual synthesis of his mature position. Chapter two analyzes the character of Marx's relationship to Hegelianism in 1837, by way of a detailed commentary on the sole surviving letter to his father. Chapters three through seven focus on Marx's dissertation. Chapters three and four examine the preparatory "Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy," and chapters five through seven examine the dissertation itself, "The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature." It is shown, not only that certain "Young Hegelians" including Marx worked out an analogy between their post-Hegelian situation and post-Aristotelian philosophy, but also that Marx's use of Epicurus encodes his critical assessment of Bruno Bauer's "philosophy of self-consciousness." Through his explicit critique of Epicurus and his implicit critique of Bauer, Marx ends by imposing a dual mandate on himself: the internal critique of Hegelian philosophy, and a call to a concrete, activist engagement with the world . This mandate informs his early career as a political journalist. Chapters eight through ten trace that career through Marx's correspondence with Arnold Ruge. These chapters show that Marx was never the uncritical disciple of Bauer, or Ruge, or Ludwig Feuerbach. The concluding chapter summarizes these results and thematically relates them to the theory of historical materialism